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Email a copy of 'Camp Battles: Pittsburgh Pirates' to a friend
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HarveyD82
freese, mercer, frazier, bell is the infield. Harrison is a 1 year wonder. he’s a platoon guy on any other team. Ngope is a glove man and that’s it. They need an arm in the rotation. Do we trust Cole for a full season? Does Nova still have magic? 3 sophomore starters? get one more arm. it’s never too late. Last year was supposed to be a “bridge year”….well see about this one. we’ve seen it before though. a winning decade followed by losing, e years of winning followed by 20 years of darkness and now 3 years if winning followed by a mediocre year. what’s gonna happen this year?
rounder829
Frazier does not have a starting job at this point. Despite how you feel about JHay, Hurdle loves him and his glove at 2B.
joew
I’d say Hanson has the inside track on the job. He’s a switch hitter, fast, fair defender and OOO. I don’t think they let him go on waivers if they can help it. I can see him getting traded though.
I don’t think Webb goes back to the Yankees. I’d expect one of Watson or Bastardo are gone along with Lablanc. With Schugel ending up in the pen giving them Watson/Bastardo, Hudson, Rivero, Nicasio, Hughes, Webb with Hutchison possibly being a swing man.
The only thing reasonably set in stone for the rotation is Cole Taillon and Nova. Kuhl, Glassnow, Brault Hutch and Williams fighting for the bottom two spots. I’d expect Kuhl and Brault out of the gate but Glasnow make a strong push to get i the rotation early in the season. Hutch and Williams will probably be the 6th man possibly long relief options.
jimmyz
I agree that they probably dont want to lose hanson on waivers for nothing so I’d imagine Gosselin is optioned and stashed as depth to start the season but I doubt leblanc is traded considering they signed him to a deal with a club option for next year. Would love to see Bastardo traded before the season to make room for Webb to see what he has though. Guessing Watson is traded at the deadline regardless of where theyre at in the standings like melancon last year barring multiple injuries in the bullpen.
Charkip
Frazier will be the new Harrison and be in a super utility role. Harrison at least has some good contact rates, even though it’s not hard contact
Monkey’s Uncle
Plus, they have enough money invested in Harrison to give him every chance to improve his offensive numbers, and Harrison is better defensively than Frazier at 2nd and 3rd. Frazier is going to play a lot regardless.
Gwynning's Anal Lover
I don’t think you are right on Bell. The Pirates have a history of waiting till June to bring up prospects, because they need more ‘seasoning.’ We all really know the real reason. So Jaso starts the season, Bell comes up around June. See ya in June Bell.
ronnsnow
he was already up last season. So the “real reason” You’re referring to, the Super 2, is a non issue. Try to keep up.
st1300b 2
No reason to call anyone an idiot.
SamFuldsFive
You’re such a tough guy.
Gwynning's Anal Lover
I’m sorry you feel like you need to belittle someone. Big respect to a small man.
Monkey’s Uncle
Seriously Ron, take a chill pill. No need to make other Pirates fans here look bad by association.
dwhitt3
Bell already came up last year
Gwynning's Anal Lover
Thanks dwhitt3. I thought if they kept him in the minors, it would delay his eligibility for arbitration, similar to what happened to Marcell Ozuna a few years back. Is that not right?
jimmyz
Bell was up for almost half a season last year and was something like 5 at bats away from losing rookie status so tecnically they could keep him in the minors for 2/3 (or more) of the season to avoid super 2 status but hes too important to winning games this year to do that.
Kang Ho Polanco
Although I agree with Jimmy’s general assessment, I’d like to clarify how super twos work, per this site:
“According to the MLBPA: Super Twos come from the group of players who have between two and three years (of) service time and at least 86 days (of) service time the previous year. The 17% of those players with the most service time become Super Twos.”
To my knowledge, this didn’t significantly change in the new CBA. So it’s a constantly moving target. It’s looking likely he would be in the top 17 percent if he stays up for all of the next two seasons, but it’s not certain until that second year of service time hits.
The Pirates have been willing to make occasional super two exceptions, such as Neil Walker. They likely would be willing to do the same with any of their young bench players and young back-end starters. They likely will not want that to happen for potential ace talents, such as Taillon and Glasnow, but justifying a move of Taillon to Triple-A without an ERA worse than 4 would likely prove difficult.
steelparrot 3
They arent going to add another SP, they want to see what they have in the young pitchers.
Assuming Glasnow makes the team out of camp. They will have 4 starters playing their first full years in the bigs. Glasnow, Taillon, Kuhl and Bell, 3 of whom are/were highly regared prospects.
They are retooling on the fly. This July trade Watson. Then, depending on the standings, trade McCutchen this summer/offseason and insert Meadows.
chesteraarthur
Glasnow is coming off a season where he walked 5/9ip and is working on his delivery, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see him start in the minors
Monkey’s Uncle
Gosselin intrigues me. It doesn’t seem like he’s ever gotten much consistent time in the majors, but it seems like he can be a useful bench bat. I wonder if Gosselin shows enough in camp leads the Bucs to possibly try to find a trade partner for Hanson. I would be fine if Hanson made the team over Gosselin, but I don’t think Hanson is ever going to be much more than a late inning defensive sub/pinch runner.
66TheNumberOfTheBest
I want to see Glasnow start in AAA. He wasn’t ready last year, they just needed something to sell to the fans in July. He needs to work on several things. Plus, I read they can pick up an extra year of control depending on how much service time he gets this year. Why bring up a guy who is not ready and cost service time? Makes no sense. Made no sense last year.
I could see Frazier beating out Harrison for 2nd base putting Harrison back into the super U role, where he’s actually better.
Depending on how they all pitch obviously, I could see them trying to hang onto Webb (maybe some phantom DL’s during the year) and trying to sneak LeBlanc down to AAA.
I think I saw all of two at bats from Hutchison, so I won’t comment, but I did like Brault.